This part of the book contains more advanced material on identifying good games, weak opponents, and typical mistakes of your opponents, as well as exploiting the advantages that you can get from picking good games and weak opponents.

Two chapters focus on strategy considerations important in picking a table and picking a particular seat. Picking a good game is the first step toward beating the game. Even if you've picked a good game, you can often make a good game better by picking a good seat. Where you sit relative to the other players can often have a big influence on your ability to avoid trap situations or to manipulate the betting to your advantage.

Most poker books take a prescriptive approach to teaching about the game. They tend to pick what the writer considers a typical game, with some particular mix of players and a particular betting structure, and proceed to tell you what hands to play and how to play them. I don't take that approach in this book. Rather than try to tell you how to play, I try to teach you how to think about poker in a way that will lead you to the correct decision in most situations. This isn't the easiest way to learn to play Hold 'Embut it's the only way to learn to play well. Three chapters cover the various theoretical perspectives useful in thinking about poker in general and Hold 'Em in particular. Hold 'Em poker in particular is a very complex game. It's not a difficult game to learn, but it can be difficult to learn to play well. To be able to analyze the game in a way that makes sense, we need theories and models to help us cut to the core issues that are relevant in a particular situation.